Okay
by murderofonerose
Summary: Sometimes, when the band is away, Charles finds himself in the need of a Nathan substitute. Warning for... sleepy cuddling, I guess.


Warning: Contains implied slash  
Pairing: Implied Nathan/Charles  
Words: 1008  
Disclaimer: I own nothing.

I started writing this in… July… because of a question about clones in the rock talk with Nathan and Charles open forum thing on the brutalbusiness livejournal comm. Finally finished it. The general idea is that since Nathan needs new livers every now and then, the best technology is available and ready to provide him with the best donor – himself. Of course, the trick to this is keeping a cloned Nathan Explosion content enough and unaware of the fact that, genetically speaking, he's entitled to the life and wealth of a world-famous billionaire.

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**Okay**_  
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Life as a clone was okay, on Clone 8's opinion.

He knew that he was a clone because that's what they called him – _they_ being mostly balding men in lab coats and some guys in black who wore hoods over their faces all the time. He didn't know what the number was for… but he figured that life was too okay to spend a lot of time thinking about something like a last name, so he mostly didn't bother. Instead, he spent a lot of his time sleeping and ignoring the frequent tests of his body functions. The scientists tacked the test results up on the bulletin board outside his door when his health – especially his liver – was particularly good, like proud parents, until, like a moody teenager, he tore them down.

It wasn't like he was some lab rat or something. They let him eat whatever he wanted, as long as it wasn't too shitty, and they didn't make him do stupid stuff like learning. Of course, they'd never let him have so much as a drop of alcohol… but genetic memory wasn't quite all it was cracked up to be, so he had only a distant, dreamlike idea of what he was missing out on.

When he wasn't sleeping, he was usually watching TV. He figured that the reception was terrible, because, no matter what show he was watching, every ten or fifteen minutes there would be a weird gap of blank, black screen. And there were some channels, most of which had the word "news" attached to them in the TV guide (which had a lot of things crossed out in thick black marker for some reason), that never came through at all. But he got _all_ of the adult movie channels, so he wasn't going to complain.

The only thing that really made life okay instead of great was that there weren't other people around. Scientists and those hooded guys didn't count – and they didn't really talk to him much, anyway. But so what? If they thought they were so clever then fine, they could keep their stupid secrets. He'd decided to stop asking questions around the time he'd figured out that getting frustrated with their non-answers and punching their faces in always ended with a tranquilizer gun.

He did have one visitor, though. Sometimes. The man in the suit and tie never said much to him either, but Clone 8 was good at listening and even better at eavesdropping; he knew that the man's name was Ofdensen (or Sir, to the scientists and hoods) and that he only came by while "the band was still on tour", whatever that meant. But that wasn't really important. What mattered was that every day for a period of several weeks Clone 8 would wake up to find Ofdensen there, tucked against his chest and dozing fitfully, and it was kinda nice.

It was one of those mornings.

Clone 8 grunted sleepily as Ofdensen jabbed an elbow into his stomach, and tightened the arm that was draped across the other man. Were a lot of people this restless even when sleeping? Maybe the guy… had problems. Or didn't get enough sleep elsewhere. Doing whatever it was he did.

Ofdensen kept elbowing him.

After a few minutes, Clone 8 reluctantly cracked an eye open and grumbled, "Hey. Stop that."

There was some sort of mumbled response. Clone 8 could have sworn he heard him say "Nathan," and then some other words he couldn't catch. Why did that seem familiar? He'd never met anyone with that name, had he? Curious now, and a little more awake, Clone 8 yawned and propped himself up on an elbow to try and figure out what the man was so restless about.

Before, he'd only had a good view of the back of Ofdensen's head. Now he could see that Ofdensen's eyes were closed, and that he'd only taken off his glasses, tie, and shoes before crawling into bed – whenever that had been. Clone 8 glanced at the alarm clock and saw that it was five in the morning, but that told him very little; the mysterious suited man could have come in minutes ago, or hours. Either way, it was kind of funny that he was only now attempting to take off his suit…

With another yawn Clone 8 sat the rest of the way up and helped get the suit jacket off, because there was no way he'd be able to get back to sleep with that elbow going like that. Ofdensen had actually managed to get it most of the way off, which was impressive considering that he was doing it one-handed while asleep and lying on his side. Clone 8 rolled him over to get the other sleeve off, and the smaller man curled a little to bury his face (and the pretty impressive dark circles under his closed eyes) in the freshly vacated warm spot on the pillow.

Clone 8 leaned over him and unceremoniously dropped the suit jacket over the side of the bed, thinking that would be the end of it and he could go back to sleep. He looked down at Ofdensen, wishing he knew more about the guy, and then gently removed his belt, too, because that probably wasn't very comfortable to sleep in either. The rest was probably okay.

Now there was just the small matter of Ofdensen hogging the pillow. With the restlessness past he looked asleep enough to almost pass for dead and Clone 8 didn't really want to wake him up, so instead he just scooted himself down a little and laid his head on the mattress, already starting to drift off again.

It was nice, lying there in the corner made by the smaller man's body and the bottom edge of the pillow. Warm. Companionable. Maybe it would have been better if he didn't already know that Ofdensen would be gone before the scientists came in for the first tests of the day, but it was still pretty okay.


End file.
